Two elements are combined in our creation, the body, which we have in common with the beasts; and reason and good judgement, which we share with the gods.

Seeing that our birth involves the blending of these two things — the body, on the one hand, that we share with animals, and, on the other hand, rationality and intelligence, that we share with the gods — most of us incline to this former relationship, wretched and dead though it is, while only a few to the one that is divine and blessed.

God's and beasts, that is what our world is made of.

Body and mind, and spirit, all combine To make the Creature, human and divine. Of this great trinity no part deny. Affirm, affirm, the Great Eternal I.

While all bodies are composed of the four elements, that is, of heat, moisture, the earthy, and air, yet there are mixtures according to natural temperament which make up the natures of all the different animals of the world, each after its kind.

We see in man three elements; the material body, the life principle and the element of human personality. The last has only slowly reached its present complexity and is still far from the power and perfection that we can imagine it will some day possess.

we are onely that amphibious piece betweene a corporall and spiritual essence, that middle forme that linkes those two together, and makes good the method of God and nature, that jumps not from extreames, but unites the incompatible distances by some middle and participating
natures.

Will you, laying aside all partiality, consider in the silence of your thoughts that we [humans] are creatures either quite like the rest [of animals], or separated by no great difference? For what is there to show that we do not resemble them? or what excellence is in us, such that we scorn to be ranked as creatures? Their bodies are built up on bones, and bound closely together by sinews; and our bodies are in like manner built up on bones, and bound closely together by sinews.

After all, we are created in the image of a God who is a diversity of persons who exist in ineffable unity.

There's only three major elements. Air, land, which is your flesh and water, which is your blood. You're walking on a third of yourself. She's called Mother Earth. She gave birth to your ass. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, your maggot food ass going right back to her!

God, creating the universe, neither made it perfectly like Himself, nor perfectly unlike, for He, being One, has made the world as not one, from the diverse multiplicity of its innumerable parts, ordaining, nevertheless, that they should collect into a certain unity by their exact contiguity. The upper world has no connexion with this subject; the lower, and elementary world, owes this contiguity to the weight divinely impressed on its parts, aided by the subtle fluidity of some of its simple bodies. It is by this quality, with which the matter of the four elements is more or less invested, that they are separated from one another, and each transported to its proper place, as the generation of compounds, and the beauty of the universe requires.

Mankind is poised midway between the gods and the beasts.

Mankind is poised midway between the gods and the beasts.

The same substance composes us — the tree overhead, the stone beneath us, the bird, the beast, the star — we are all one, all moving to the same end.